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Here Be Absolute

This afternoon I was musing about the movie I ♡ Huckabees, in particular this exchange:Tommy: What are you doing tomorrow?Albert: I was thinking about chaining myself to a bulldozer. Do you want to come?Tommy: What time?Albert: Mmm…one, one-thirty.Tommy: Sounds good. Should I bring my own chains?Albert: We always do.

“We always do.” Indeed.
What are the chains that I bring with me? What am I chaining myself to? Not just principles and beliefs, but preferences, aversions, people…

Then this evening a dear friend called me to ask a few questions…
“What is the Absolute?” “Is it considered God?”

My belief is that the Absolute is not God, but a formless eternality from which all form arises. It is then us, human beings, who call this formlessness God and give it a mask that one can relate to based on one`s personal theological and/or cosmological belief system.

From eternal formlessness arises all form.
From silence begets sound, particularly language of all types.
From that which is utterly still and apparently empty emerges movement and any thing and every thing.

Then came the old cartographer`s phrase: “Here Be Dragons.” A phrase used to designate a place that is beyond the known territories on old maps, usually written in Latin: hic sunt dracones. A phrase that I can imagine gave rise to fear, caution, curiosity and the sense of a profound mystery waiting to be known.

This is the Absolute.
A formlessness, from the essence of which all form, all life arises from and is then subsequently reabsorbed into when that physical life ceases to function in its entirety.
Beyond the known territory of one`s own body, town, friends, loved ones. Beyond the known territory of one`s own reality.
A profound mystery waiting to be known.

If it weren`t for the chains we bring, we would experience that formlessness, that absoluteness, that mysteriousness as a part of who we are. As the essence of who we are. As the unchanging eternality of our own finite identity.

In my experience, the only way to even begin to release the chains is via a sequence of authentic and efficient meditation. It is this type of meditation practice that gives us the capacity to switch from a subjective view of reality to an objective view of life. To not just explore the territory of the Absolute, but bit by bit become that territory. In other words to know it. To know this Absolute is to truly know ourselves.

What are the chains I have wrapped around my own heart that keep me in what I perceive as “safe” territory? That hinder my access to a land of profound mystery that is myself.